Syracuse, N.Y. — On Feb. 12, 1990, Galaxy Communications was born.
Galaxy CEO Ed Levine first launched the company as The Radio Corporation in 1990 with one rock station, WKLL, in the Utica-Rome market. Thirty years later, the locally owned and locally operated company owns more than a dozen radio stations in Central New York, including TK99 (WTKW-FM), K-Rock (WKLL/WKRL/WKRH FM), Sunny 102 (WZUN-FM) and ESPN Syracuse (WTLA-AM), and puts on major events like Taste of Syracuse, Lights on the Lake, and the Leon Festival.
“I’m really proud of the contributions we made to the community, both Syracuse and Utica,” Levine said. “Whether it be charitable contributions, concerts we’ve put on, saving events like Taste of Syracuse — which would’ve went away if we hadn’t stepped in — I think in some small way we’ve made the area a better place to live. That’s my proudest accomplishment.”
Levine is also proud of how Galaxy has “provided a very good income and life for a lot of employees over the years.”
Levine grew up in Westchester County as a radio “geek," constantly listening and calling in to New York City shows, and pursued a career in broadcasting beginning in 1974 at Syracuse University. He worked hard to get on the air at WAER as a freshman, “while everyone was out chasing chicks,” and became the station’s program director his senior year at SU.
“I owe pretty much everything that’s happened in my life, positively, to Syracuse University and to Newhouse in particular. Because at the end of my sophomore year, I met this really hot freshman,” Levine said of his now wife Pam. “And after 40-some-odd years, we’re still together. And my daughter went to Newhouse. So everything that I’ve had success in my career, and in my personal life, really all started at Newhouse.”
After graduating from the Newhouse School, his career took him to jobs as a DJ and program director at radio stations in Albany, Houston and Washington, D.C. But even at WJFK, competing with big names like Howard Stern in a top 10 market, he wanted more — he wanted to be his own boss.
“My father did not leave me with a lot of material things, but he left me with one profound statement when I was eight or nine years old,” Levine said. “He looked at little Eddie Levine and said ‘Son, you want to work for yourself. You want to be in control of your own destiny.’”
He didn’t think about it much at the time, but by 1990, he realized the importance of his father’s words. He and Bob Raibbe launched WKLL in Utica, but the company struggled to make money for several years — Levine didn’t even give himself a paycheck until January of 1994.
In 1991, Levine says he was making six figures in D.C. with stock options, and could’ve enjoyed a nice, easy career path by selling the radio station for a small profit with Raibbe. Instead, he quit his job at WJFK in Washington, D.C., and moved to Central New York to focus on the company — a risky move as he and his wife Pam had an 18-month-old daughter at home.
But the gamble paid off, and now Galaxy is a multi-million-dollar company that boasts partners like Syracuse University, investors like Orange basketball coach Jim Boeheim, and an events management business that recently expanded to states like North and South Carolina.
It’s a lot of hard work, but Levine wouldn’t have it any other way.
“This, to me, is the best of all possible worlds," Levine said. "I love the life we have, I love this company, I love what we do. This is everything to me.”
This 1994 file photo shows Ed Levine in the TK99 radio station in Utica.
As Galaxy celebrates its 30th anniversary, Levine notes that a lot of things have changed. Broadcast radio has much more competition today, including SiriusXM satellite radio and streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music and Pandora, not to mention smartphones and the internet at large.
The biggest difference from when he started, though, is how the Telecommunications Act of 1996 lifted caps on radio ownerships and deregulated broadcasting in general. And not all for the good, as large radio owners like iHeartMedia have gone with fewer local DJs.
“I think radio at its core is a people business. It’s a small industry. It’s not meant to be a Wall Street business. It’s not meant to be financed with private equity money where they’re looking for 25 and 30 percent returns. And I think much more bad came out of that than good,” Levine said. “Radio could have developed streaming before anyone else, but they were too busy being acquired and acquiring other properties."
Another change, on a local scale, is the addition of a new concert venue in Central New York: The St. Joseph’s Health Amphitheater at Lakeview, which opened in 2015 as simply the Lakeview Amphitheater. The St. Joe’s Amp brings in 20 to 25 concerts a year to Syracuse, several of which are promoted by Galaxy radio stations like K-Rock and TK99.
For two decades, Galaxy put on K-Rockathon concerts that drew tens of thousands of people to see big names like Papa Roach, Third Eye Blind, Limp Bizkit, Eve 6, Bush and Stone Temple Pilots. Levine says K-Rockathon was very profitable, partly because it was the only major rock show in Central New York for many years, but now fans can see multiple concerts at the Amp every year.
As a result, Levine confirmed there were will be no K-Rockathon this year, for the second year in a row and the third time in five years.
“I think is better for the community during parts of the summer than just one big one. It’s not as good for us, but it’s better for the community and sometimes you have to take one for the team,” Levine says. “We’re huge supporters of the Amp, and I think it’s one of the underrated, great accomplishments in Central New York in the last 10 years.”
And of course, another thing that’s changed is the music itself. Levine says his favorite format is AOR — album-oriented rock — where DJs would play deep cuts from artists, rather than just focus on the hits.
“I grew up listening to radio stations that would play anything they want. Somehow in this job, I played these songs (at K-Rock) when they were new and now TK99 and Sunny 102 plays them as classics," Levine said with a chuckle. "The fella that used to run the Buffalo Bills, he grew up in Minoa, he told me a story that he still remembers me debuting AC/DC’s ‘Back in Black’ at midnight on 95X. And I’m looking at him, like, jeez, this guy’s in his 40s, how old am I?”
But one thing that will never change is Levine’s passion for radio, which he still credits as vital to Galaxy’s other revenue streams and the future of the company itself.
“It’s the variety of the job that I like the best. This job is never boring. Every day is very, very, very different,” Levine said. “Some people look at retirement as this wonderful thing down the road... To me, it sounds like a nightmare."
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